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After weeks of rumors, universities unveil the digital education consortium Unizin. After weeks of rumors, Colorado State University, Indiana University, the University of Florida and the University of Michigan on Wednesday unveiled Unizin, a consortium aimed at “tipping the table in favor of the academy” on digital education.

On a website that went live just after midnight this morning, organizers described Unizin as a sort of one-stop shop for digital education, supporting “flipped classroom[s], online courses/degrees, badged experiences for alumni, or even MOOCs if desired.” The website lists James L. Hilton, dean of libraries and vice provost for digital education and innovation at the University of Michigan, and Brad Wheeler, vice president for IT and CIO at Indiana University, as Unizin’s co-founders.

John Sperling, a Higher-Ed Pioneer, Left Disciples Across For-Profit Sector. The legacy of John G.

Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenix who died on Friday at the age of 93, includes more than the sprawling institution that he began in an Arizona union hall in 1976 with eight students. Mr. Sperling was instrumental in creating today's for-profit-college industry, a sector now known for both its focus on working adults and the prominence of giant publicly traded companies. Several of the companies that now dominate the industry are led by executives who either worked closely with Mr.
A Taxonomy of Adaptive Analytics Strategies. I almost never quote a blog post in its entirety, but this one from Dan Meyer is so good that I just can’t bear to cut a single word: Stephanie Simon , reporting for Reuters on inBloom and SXSWedu :

When Ed-Tech Startups Fail. This is a guest post by Audrey Watters, an education-journalist who writes for KQED MindShift, Edutopia, and O’Reilly Radar.

You can also find her work on her own blog Hack Education. I received the email from Knack for Teachers on Wednesday that the classroom data tracking and visualization tool would be shutting down.
Six Ways the edX Announcement Gets Automated Essay Grading Wrong. Last week, edX made a splashy spectacle of an announcement about automated essay grading, leaving educators fuming.

Let’s rethink their claims. “Give Professors a break,” the New York Times suggested in this joint press release from edX, Harvard, and MIT.
RethinkEducation. We actively partner with our portfolio companies to provide them with the support they need to be successful.

Our goal is to build long-term relationships with our entrepreneurs and co-investors.
E-Learning Providers Eager to Expand. Online video tutorials are catching on, and several companies in the space hope to ink deals, says Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard May 16, 2014 As more tech professionals wield online training to keep abreast of the latest developments, providers of these services, such as Pluralsight LLC, are using M&A as a way to keep up with the pace of technological advancements.

The Salt Lake City, Utah, company contracts with experts in a variety of niche fields to film and broadcast training videos about various types of technology. To expand its catalog, Pluralsight has been busy purchasing rivals and growing its library to more than 2,000 videos. Pluralsight's most recent acquisition-the $45 million purchase of Digital Tutors-allows the company to include training videos on creative topics, including graphic design, animation and visual effects.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based Digital Tutors offers training videos featuring experts from big-name companies, including Walt Disney Co.
Edsurge. It’s been the talk of the EdSurge office since March: After the blistering pace of VC investment in edtech over the first 3 months of 2014, how much would the industry rake in during Q2?

As June winds down, we’re getting our first look at the answer. The edtech industry received over $305 million dollars in VC investment in the second quarter of 2014, according to our preliminary analysis of deals reported in EdSurge and those logged in CrunchBase. The single largest deal between April and June was the $80 million investment in Social Finance, Inc.
For Unizin, common infrastructure means commercial software @insidehighered. Mashable. YouTube education sensation the Khan Academy debuted a series of tutorials on astronomy and space exploration made in collaboration with NASA Thursday.

The announcement at the fourth annual White House Science Fair made it clear that the new tutorials are meant to generate more interest in science, technology, engineering and math (also known as STEM) education. The tutorials on Khan Academy, a non-profit, educational website, are divided into three different sections. Each section is intended to acquaint the user with different aspects of space, and NASA's understanding and exploration of it — from teaching users about the different protocols NASA uses to explaining the challenges of Mars exploration. The collaboration between NASA and Khan Academy began last summer, when NASA provided Khan Academy with the information to create the educational content.

Increasing student interest in STEM has been an area of increased focus in U.S. education in recent years.
Some teaching and learning centers have closed after the recession, but field is growing over all @insidehighered. When Endicott College shutters its Center for Teaching Excellence this summer, it will be the latest in a string of such post-recession closures that have rattled the close-knit online community of teaching and learning center directors and employees.

But even as each closure reminds instructional specialists that their profession is one in flux -- and that not all centers will survive an era of smaller budgets and the perception among some that technology can stand in for good teaching -- leaders in the field say that it is growing over all, and that many centers are thriving.
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Learning tech companies

SmartSparrowPressRelease31314. Udacity Redesign Embraces Founder's 'Pivot'
Fidelis Debuts Personalized Learning Platform. Personalized Learning | News Fidelis Debuts Personalized Learning Platform A new online learning platform aims to put the student in the driver's seat of his or her own education. Fidelis has debuted its Software as a Service (SaaS) learning platform. The platform includes online course delivery along with "traditional coursework, mentorship, coaching, micro-credentialing through digital badges, and job placement," according to the company. Fidelis is designed to help students create and achieve their personal learning goals. Next, the student designs a personalized learning plan. The system includes a portfolio tool. Fidelis also comes with a learning relationship management tool, designed for individuals managing the student's portfolio.

Libraries

Higher Ed Software. Last month I organized a review community and forum focused on software for higher education. SoftwarePhD.com is exclusively for professionals at colleges and universities and just might be the tool that spares you from making your next software mis-purchase. Long, long ago at a university campus not so far away the landscape of third-party software was all but barren.
Higher Education Software Reviews. Stairways to Heaven Part 2. In a previous post I described the general philosophy of our lab as one focused on building “Stairways to Heaven”; that is, tools that allow us to transform education from where it is now, to what we’d like it to be.
Pulse podcast explores use of ePortfolios in higher education. Edinnovation.gsvadvisors. Arizona State University, the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and GSV Advisors are proud to announce the finalists in each of twelve categories for the 2nd Annual Return On Education (“ROE”) Innovation Awards.

Edinnovation.gsvadvisors. AACU conference shows plenty of uses for e-portfolios, but also the pitfalls of hype. E-Learning. Educational bloggs and mags. Open Ed Resources.